


And If I Find Myself Unsound

by dannyPURO



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, Grantaire Tries Very Hard, Hand Jobs, M/M, Miscommunication, Modern Era, Pining, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21754411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dannyPURO/pseuds/dannyPURO
Summary: It all begins when Enjolras’s power goes out in the middle of the night.Or, well, that’s not exactly true. It actually begins five years earlier, but that’s a very long story and Enjolras, quite frankly, does not have time to start from the beginning.And so, for the sake of convenience, it begins when Enjolras’s power goes out while he’s in the middle of writing an editorial, taking the wifi and the very last shreds of Enjolras’s patience with it.Enjolras takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and says, very quietly, “Fuck!”In which Enjolras gets the flu, Combeferre is in Morocco, and Grantaire is trying his best.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire
Comments: 67
Kudos: 514





	And If I Find Myself Unsound

It all begins when Enjolras’s power goes out in the middle of the night.

Or, well, that’s not exactly true. It actually begins five years earlier, when Enjolras is eighteen and Grantaire is twenty and Grantaire walks into a meeting scruffy and wine-drunk and laughing into Joly and Bossuet’s shoulders and Enjolras stops in the middle of his sentence to stare and only recovers in time to snap something a little too harsh if only to make up for the hot flush that’s risen to his cheeks, but that’s a very long story and Enjolras, quite frankly, does not have time to start from the beginning.

And so, for the sake of convenience, it begins when Enjolras’s power goes out while he’s in the middle of writing an editorial, taking the wifi and the very last shreds of Enjolras’s patience with it.

Enjolras takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and says, very quietly, “Fuck!”

And then he does what he does in all crisis scenarios--he calls Combeferre. 

Combeferre picks up after a ring and a half. “Jolras?” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.

“My power just went out and now I don’t have any wifi and I’m supposed to have this editorial done by tomorrow morning and if I don’t they’re never going to publish it and I was so close and I have such a bad headache and I think I’m going to scream, do you have wifi? Can I come over?” He takes another breath. He thinks, distantly, that he might be erring vaguely close to hyperventilating.

Combeferre makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a groan, which is, in Enjolras’s opinion, incredibly rude and a little unfair. “I do have wifi,” he says, and Enjolras has already stood up from his desk when he continues, “However, seeing as I have been in Morocco for four days and the wifi is also in Morocco, I don’t think it will help you very much.”

Enjolras shuts his eyes for a moment. “Right, sorry, I knew that,” he scrubs a hand over his face. “Can I go over to your apartment anyways?” 

“I mean, you-” he pauses. “You know what, I had to borrow your spare key when I lost mine last week. Haven’t given it back yet.” 

He’s right, of course. Enjolras lets his head thud against the tabletop, which certainly doesn’t improve his headache. “I need to finish this article,” he says, and Combeferre makes a noise of sympathy.

“Tell you what,” he says. “Call around. I’m sure someone will let you use their wifi.”

“Okay,” Enjolras manages. “Thanks, Ferre.”

He hangs up and calls Courfeyrac.

And calls him again.

And calls him a third time.

When he gets sent to voicemail for the third time, he buries his face in his hands and tries really, really hard not to cry in frustration. Courfeyrac is probably out, of course, maybe at a club, and it’s unrealistic to expect him to answer the phone at half past midnight, anyways, but-

But still.

He debates, briefly, calling Feuilly, who would probably pick up but who has to wake up at 4:30 for work, before he decides against it and pulls up the groupchat on his phone.  _ Urgent!,  _ he sends,  _ Does anyone have wifi I could use? I have a deadline and my power is out. Help! _

Enjolras, as a rule, does not text in the groupchat except for to send important schedule changes and updates for les Amis, so he can’t quite say what a normal amount of time to wait after sending a text is, but he feels as though he’s going to go crazy if he loses any more time. After five minutes (which feel more like twenty) he sends another text that reads,  _ Help!!! _

And, thank the Lord, he gets a response. He scrambles for his phone when the alert sounds and unlocks it with trembling fingers and-

And he stops for just a moment, because the text is from Grantaire.  _ I have wifi and power. You can come over. _ A second text comes through just seconds later.  _ If you still need to.  _

Enjolras stares down at his phone. It’s just…

It’s just bizarre.

Because he and Grantaire are- Well, they’re friends, Enjolras supposes, but they don’t really spend time together. Not alone, not outside of meetings and parties and nights where they all pile onto somebody’s couch. He’s certainly never been over to Grantaire’s apartment without, at the very least, Combeferre at his side. Not that Enjolras is opposed to doing so, it’s just that-

Well, Enjolras has always been under the impression that Grantaire simply doesn’t like him very much at all. Which makes sense, of course--he’s well aware that he can be a bit much. He’s a bit much, and Grantaire is funny and kind and talented and really, genuinely cool and a great time to be around and Enjolras isn’t really any of those things. And Enjolras talks about business too much and he hates parties and he isn’t good at texting and he seems to be in a constant state of saying the wrong thing, so… yeah.

He runs a hand through his hair and thinks it over. On one hand, Grantaire probably doesn’t even want him there. He’s probably saying it to be kind, or maybe just so that Joly doesn’t lecture him come morning, but he surely doesn’t want Enjolras coming over to his apartment in the middle of the night to write an op-ed for some cause Grantaire doesn’t even care about. And Enjolras-

Well, Grantaire is funny and kind and talented and hot and shockingly charming, and Enjolras has kind of been in love with him for years, and Enjolras really, really tries to just stay out of his way. 

On the other hand, he really, really needs to get this article written. 

After another moment’s internal debate, he grabs his laptop, his toothbrush, and his wallet and heads to Grantaire’s.

He is only somewhat impeded by the fucking _torrential downpour_ outside, which he probably should have anticipated, given the whole “no power” thing. 

By the time he makes it to Grantaire’s door, he is soaked through to the bone and dripping water on the hall carpet. He knocks. 

Grantaire, thank the Lord, opens the door. “Enjolras,” he says, and he’s staring.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, with a nod. “May I come in?”

“Come in?” he echoes.

“You said that I could come over and use your wifi.”

Grantaire draws in a deep breath, scrubs a hand across his face. Enjolras feels, in an instant, that he has somehow managed to fuck up yet again; it seems everything he does around Grantaire results in exasperation and that certain odd look upon Grantaire’s face.

“Does-” he clears his throat, tries again. He can feel a hot flush rising to his cheeks. “Does your offer not still stand?”

And that seems to jolt Grantaire to motion, for whatever reason. He coughs, shakes his head. “No, no, yeah, sure, come on in,” he says, stepping out of the way, “You’re soaked, come on in.”

Enjolras follows him into his apartment. It’s so…  _ warm,  _ almost, with mismatched furniture and too many books strewn about, and if he could get away with it (if he didn’t have an editorial to write, if he had the time, if Grantaire actually  _ liked  _ him instead of merely tolerating his presence) he’s pretty sure he’d like to curl up on the couch and shut his eyes. Just for a moment.

As it is, he clears his throat (it’s been sore, lately). “Right,” he says. “I don’t want to bother you. Where can I work where I won’t get in your way?”

Grantaire is staring again, if he ever stopped. “You’re soaked.”

And, okay, he’s right, but it’s nothing to worry about. “I’m fine,” he says. Which is totally true. Even if he is a little cold and shaky. (Even if he’s totally lying when he qualifies it as a  _ little _ .)

“Okay, just-” Grantaire huffs a sigh and makes a move towards his bedroom. “Just stay there,” he calls over his shoulder.

He comes back with a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt in his arms and tosses them at Enjolras. 

Enjolras, hardly shockingly, does not succeed in catching them. “I don’t need to take your clothing.” He bends to pick the clothes up, anyways. “Really, Grantaire, I’m fine.” 

“I did wash them, you know,” Grantaire says. “If you’re worried about that. Still warm, too, just for you, Apollo.”

“No!” Enjolras clears his throat, holds the clothes a little closer to his chest. (They’re still warm from the dryer and oh, God, they’re tempting.) “I just mean to say, I- I’m obviously not worried about the cleanliness of your clothes. I’m sure you wash your clothes an absolutely normal amount, if not more-” (What the fuck is he saying, he needs to stop talking)- “And even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t-” he catches himself. “I’m fine. Grantaire.”

Grantaire shuts his eyes for a moment. “Enjolras,” he says. He opens his eyes again. “You are dripping on my carpet. Please just wear the sweatpants.”

He might have a point. “Fine,” Enjolras huffs.

When he gets changed in the bathroom, he only lets himself bury his nose in the fabric of Grantaire’s shirt for ten seconds, (he counts), which is, in his humble opinion, quite the show of restraint.

Grantaire sits him down on the couch and relieves him of his sopping clothes and goes to put them in the dryer. 

Enjolras gets to writing. And how long he writes for, he can’t quite say, only that at some point, Grantaire returns, wearing a sweater and holding a quilt. He stands, silent, in the doorway--Enjolras startles when he sees him.

“Grantaire,” he says, and his voice comes out half-hoarse. His throat is sore, scratchy, and he can’t remember when it got quite so bad. 

“Do you want any tea?” Grantaire asks, oddly soft.

Enjolras nearly says no without thinking--he is in the habit of asking nothing of Grantaire. But then he stops himself, reconsiders, and says, “Yes,” both because a cup of tea sounds lovely and because Grantaire sounds lovely, too. “Yes, thank you.”

Grantaire makes him a cup of tea. Enjolras can hear him puttering about in the kitchen, shuffling through cabinets and clinking dishes. He’s normally a stickler for silence while he works; somehow, Grantaire doesn’t seem that distracting. 

“Is mint okay?” Grantaire calls--still soft.

“Mint is fine,” Enjolras says.

More rifling. “Are you sure?” he asks. “I’ve got… I’ve got chamomile, I’ve got… I’ve got rooibos, whatever you want.”

“Mint is fine,” he says, again. “Thanks.”

He keeps typing. His fingers feel a little slow, clumsy. He keeps having to retype words, rephrase sentences. No matter.

Grantaire sets a mug of tea down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “One mint tea for the fearless leader,” he says, and Enjolras scowls, because that’s generally when Grantaire takes his leave, but Grantaire just sits down beside him and takes a sip from his own mug. “What’s the project this time?”

Enjolras tilts his laptop screen towards closed and picks up his tea, takes a sip. “An editorial about the state of our mindsets towards the poor and social programs. I’m supposed to have it done by nine in the morning, so…” he shrugs.

“Ah,” Grantaire says, a smile tugging at his lips. “The good fight continues.”

“I suppose,” Enjolras says ruefully, but he feels a little better with Grantaire sitting here beside him. 

They sit there, together, for a while. They drink their tea. Grantaire is close, very close, and Enjolras isn’t sure if he can really feel the heat off his arm or if it’s just his tired mind hoping for it dearly. 

“Are you staying the night?” Grantaire asks, then, and the moment drops a little. Because, right, of course, Grantaire is simply trying to figure out logistics, figure out how long Enjolras will be here on his couch, mooching off his wifi and his tea and his sweatpants. 

He shrugs, keeps his gaze somewhere near his laptop. “I’ll leave as soon as I finish. Before you wake up, probably, so don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not worried,” Grantaire says, all rushed-like, and he takes a breath. “You can sleep here if you want to.”

A tempting offer, if only it meant what Enjolras wishes it meant. “I don’t think I will,” he says, much as he curses the words that find their way out of his throat. “But thank you.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says, and he looks flushed, too-- perhaps from the tea. He stands. “I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.” 

“Okay,” Enjolras echoes. 

Grantaire goes to bed. He’s left the quilt he was carrying over the arm of the sofa. When he shuts his bedroom door, Enjolras lets himself pull it over his shoulders, wrap it tight, before he starts working again. He was cold, anyways.

It’s slow going, slower than he feels it ought to be. He types paragraphs, deletes them, types them again. He looks back at his writing and finds typos and words skipped and words repeated all too often. He stares at his screen for minutes at a time, fingers still, simply searching for the right words.

The clock on the wall ticks past two, then past three. 

Enjolras is no stranger to late nights but he feels more exhausted than he ever has in his life. His head pounds, spins. His eyelids feel heavy. 

Four o’clock comes and slips by. He  _ aches _ .

Enjolras wakes from a doze with a jolt and can’t help but to mourn his missing half hour when each sentence seems to be taking so endlessly long to write. It is a trial that seems to have no end in sight.

However, like all trials, it does reach its end eventually. He finishes the conclusion as the clock strikes half five and loathes to proofread but does so anyways and is glad for it when he comes across two unfinished sentences and one word that does not exist.

He sends it to the editor, sets his laptop on the coffee table, and puts his head in his hands.

Christ.

He should leave. He should really leave. He told Grantaire he’d leave when he was done and he’s finished and sent it off and he should leave. Grantaire, surely, has no desire to shuffle out of his bedroom come morning and find Enjolras on his couch. He knows all of this. He  _ knows  _ it.

That knowledge does not stop him from wrapping the quilt closer around himself and nestling down on the sofa. Just for a moment. A moment, before he leaves.

His eyes slip closed.

Enjolras awakes to too-bright sunlight and a headache so excruciating it takes him a few moments to realize a few significant things; One: That he is very much not on the couch he fell asleep on the night before; Two: That he is still in Grantaire’s apartment, and therefore, as Grantaire doesn’t have a guest room, in Grantaire’s bed; Three: That he feels, to put it lightly, really, really,  _ really _ bad. He  _ aches _ , aches all over, and he’s freezing, despite the comforter tucked close around him. He can’t quite say what time it is--the clock on the nightstand is tilted a bit too far away from the bed and he can’t seem to persuade his arm to move, but it must be late enough, what with the sun so high in the sky--but he’s exhausted.

It’s possible, he reasons, that he may be sick.

Fuck.

He pulls the comforter up to his ears and lets himself drift off to sleep once more.

When he wakes, it’s to a hand on his forehead and a weight at the side of the bed. For a moment, he thinks that perhaps Combeferre has returned from Morocco--he can’t imagine anyone else who would care for him so. 

He cracks open his eyes.

It’s not Combeferre.

Grantaire sits at the side of the bed, watching Enjolras with a look in his eyes that Enjolras, with his foggy thoughts, cannot quite identify. 

“R?” he asks, but his throat is sore as anything and his voice comes out a whisper. He clears his throat, tries again. “R?”

Grantaire pulls his hand back as if something had scalded him. Enjolras misses its presence dearly. “How are you feeling?” he asks, voice low.

“I think I’m sick,” he admits. 

Grantaire huffs a laugh, but it’s tinged with panic and nowhere near as bright as it usually is. “You’re burning up.” His hand twitches, moves to settle back on Enjolras’s forehead, but then drops. “And you slept all morning, which isn’t really your style.”

“All morning?” Enjolras asks, because God, he meant to get out of Grantaire’s hair. “What time is it?”

He glances over at the clock. “Two thirty. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I think I’m supposed to let you sleep.”

“I’m the one in your bed.”

Grantaire flushes. Enjolras didn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation. “I tried to wake you up for breakfast and you wouldn’t stir,” he says. “And you were running a temperature and you seemed cold and my bed is a lot more comfortable than the couch, anyways, so I just…” he fades off, shrugs. 

He just moved Enjolras to the bedroom, Enjolras supposes. He must have carried him, flush against his chest, closer than Enjolras has ever been to Grantaire and he wasn’t even awake to remember it.

“Thank you,” Enjolras says. His voice cracks.

Grantaire just shrugs again. His gaze has dropped to the comforter.

“Really,” says Enjolras. “You didn’t need to do all that.”

He stiffens. “I couldn’t exactly leave you to wither away on my couch, now, could I? Where would I sit?”

Enjolras freezes. Because right, this is happening outside of his daydreams, and outside of his daydreams, people sit on couches and Grantaire doesn’t like him. Right. He moves to sit up, which sets his head spinning and throbbing in pain. “I can leave as soon as I’ve got my stuff together,” he says, though the very thought of navigating the Metro in his state makes him wince. “I’ll be out of your way.”

“No!” Grantaire reaches out, grabs his arm, presses it back to the bed. “No, I didn’t mean- I wasn’t trying to imply-” He takes a breath. “I don’t mind. Really. You’re sick, you shouldn’t be home alone.”

“I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to waste your day doing it.” He expects that to be it, for better or for worse; he expects Grantaire to get annoyed and argue back and then send him home.

He does not expect Grantaire to sigh, press him back down to the mattress, and pass him a mug of tea. “Can you please not antagonize me for once in your life?” He shakes some Tylenol out into his hand, passes them to Enjolras. “Just… just take those and go back to sleep.”

It’s a very tempting offer. He eyes Grantaire silently.

“Take the Tylenol, Apollo.”

He takes the Tylenol. 

“And you should drink some tea. I called Joly and he said you should stay hydrated.”

Enjolras takes a sip of tea. It’s sweet and warm and wonderful, even if his hands are shaking a little where they hold the mug. “Is that all he said?”

“It also seemed like he thought you might be dying, but I thought it would be bad for your morale if I told you that bit.” Grantaire takes the mug from him before he even realizes that it had been drooping in his hands, threatening to spill and soak through the covers. 

“I don’t think I’m dying,” Enjolras says, though- “Although I could feel a little better.” Understatement of the year.

Grantaire laughs. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. Enjolras feels his eyes begin to slip closed. 

“Are you cold?” Grantaire asks, voice soft, and Enjolras can’t quite say when his hand settled atop Enjolras’s arm, the two separated by the comforter. 

He nods. He can’t quite bring himself to speak. 

“I’ll bring you a quilt,” he says. When he stands, Enjolras misses the warmth of his hand. “Get some rest.”

Enjolras must fall asleep fast, because he doesn’t see Grantaire come back with the quilt. 

Enjolras coughs himself awake, which is, as he discovers, a highly unpleasant process. When he can breathe again (and it does take several minutes) he takes inventory. 

If possible, he feels worse than before. His head is aching--he’s not sure if the Tylenol has worn off or if there are simply limits to its power. He’s not even quite sure what time it is--or at what time he took the Tylenol, for that matter. At some point, Grantaire must have come in and shut the curtains.

But his head aches and his body aches and his throat burns something awful and he feels shaky and freezing and too hot all at once.

He also has to pee.

He spends a few moments wishing desperately for his bladder to divinely empty itself without requiring his walking to the bathroom, to no avail. He rolls his way out of bed--his head protests loudly at this--and pulls on the thick, soft sweater that was hung over the back of a chair and shuffles unsteadily from the bedroom.

Grantaire, disarmingly, is in the kitchen, watching a pot simmer on the stove. He turns at the noise of the door. “Enjolras,” he says, and it is absent of all defenses.

He clears his throat. “I just had to-” he points at the bathroom, shoves a hand in his pocket. Christ, but having a fever certainly doesn’t make him  _ less  _ awkward around Grantaire.

“Carry on, then.”

Enjolras does.

Grantaire is still cooking when he comes back out, and Enjolras lets himself drift closer. “What are you making?” he asks, and he hacks a cough into the crook of his arm. 

“Soup,” Grantaire says. “Well, broth. I thought you should get some calories in you.”

Enjolras squints at the pot. His head is spinning again. “You made me soup?”

“I already had the stock in the fridge. Wasn’t a big deal.” Grantaire casts a glance over at Enjolras. “How’s the fever?”

He shakes his head, lets his eyes shut for a moment. 

Grantaire tsks. The only warning Enjolras gets is the sound of him setting his spoon down on the stovetop before he steps forward and puts his hand to Enjolras’s forehead. “I guess the Tylenol wore off,” he says, but Enjolras can do nothing but list forwards towards him, towards his broad hands and warm arms. “Enjolras?”

Enjolras blinks his eyes open. “Yes?”

“Go back to bed,” Grantaire says, and he slides a hand around to ruffle Enjolras’s (gross, greasy, hopelessly mussed) hair before letting go. “I’ll bring you some drugs and broth and crackers. All the good shit, just for you.”

He can’t think of anything to do but agree, so he says, “Okay,” and stumbles his way back to the bedroom. He is loathe to make Grantaire care for him, he thinks as he clumsily tucks himself back into bed, but somehow, he is far more loathe to do anything or think anything or remain awake. Besides, it’s far easier to lay under Grantaire’s quilt and drink his soup than to think about how he’s never been this kind to Enjolras when Enjolras didn’t have a raging fever. 

Oh, well.

He finds himself coughing again, doubled over in bed and gasping for breath. God, curse this illness, it’s awful, it’s the worst. He struggles to catch his breath, believes himself free, then keeps coughing.

Grantaire lays a hand, heavy and comforting, on his back, settles beside him on the bed. Enjolras hadn’t even heard him enter the room. “You good?” he asks.

Enjolras tries his very best not to cough all over the man he’s disastrously in love with. It’s almost effective. “Yeah,” he chokes out. “I’m good.”

When he recovers (or, at least, when he can breathe without coughing his lungs up) Grantaire passes him a mug of broth and watches him with worried eyes. “Joly said the sodium would be good for you. Electrolytes, or something.”

Enjolras’s throat still hurts, raw and sharp like there’s something lodged in it, so he just nods and takes a sip. It’s good, really good, but his stomach turns, anyways. 

“Did you end up finishing the editorial?” Grantaire asks, after a beat, and he sounds… cautious, almost, which is so strange. He’s hardly a cautious person. There’s hardly any need. 

He nods again, drinks some more broth. 

“Good,” Grantaire says. He’s fiddling with the stitching on the quilt. “Good, good, I- I was just wondering, because,” he clears his throat, “because I know it was important to you, so when I saw you were sick, I opened your laptop, because I thought that maybe if you weren’t finished I could just… you know, just finish a few sentences, or whatever, send it off, but it was locked, so I wasn’t sure if you-” he shrugs. “Anyways, I’m glad you could finish it.”

Enjolras stares. He is far too feverish to figure out what the hell that could possibly even mean, because-

Because Grantaire doesn’t even pay attention in meetings, he doesn’t even  _ care  _ about the shit Enjolras was writing about, but more than that, he-

Why would he-

Why-

Grantaire is talking again, but Enjolras can’t quite say when he started. “-shouldn’t have gone through your things, but I just-”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, and he thinks he would have said it firmly, too, if his voice didn’t sound so weak, so shredded. Grantaire stops his rambling. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he says, voice low, and-

And somehow, it sounds like he means that more than anything. 

But Enjolras can’t think about that. He can’t get to thinking about what on Earth Grantaire might mean when he knows that he will never mean anything near what Enjolras wants him to, and God, Enjolras was only meant to stay for a few hours to mooch off his wifi and Grantaire seemed so hesitant about that, even, and now he’s in Grantaire’s bed and Grantaire is making him soup and-

“Enjolras?”

His head is pounding, aching so badly that he can do very little but close his eyes and press a hand to his temple and swear something unintelligible under his breath. 

“Enj?” Grantaire asks again, but Enjolras can do nothing but shake his head and allow Grantaire to take the mug of broth from his hands. 

Enjolras knows his forehead is slick with sweat but Grantaire pushes his hair back off of it like it’s nothing. “You’re really sick, aren’t you,” Grantaire murmurs, and it sounds like he’s talking more to himself than to Enjolras.

He doesn’t mean to lean into the touch, doesn’t mean to collapse a little against Grantaire’s side, but he can’t help it and he can’t stop once he has. “‘M sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t quite know what he’s apologizing for, what with all the lines he’s crossed in the past 24 hours. 

Grantaire makes a noise somewhere between wounded and confused. “Sorry?”

“I-” he hacks out a fit of coughing, folding almost double over the comforter. “I’m s-” he is seized by coughing again and gives up on trying to speak in favor of trying to breathe.

Grantaire just pulls him in close and holds him against his chest, and when Enjolras finally stops coughing, he-

Oh, he is rendered mute and helpless by the sheer  _ closeness  _ of it all. Grantaire tugs him closer still once he’s breathing steady, holds him to his chest with arms warm and firm around him, and when Enjolras breathes in he smells like sweat and soap and wool and a hint of cologne and-

His eyes slip closed. He can do nothing to stop them. His head is pounding, pushing behind his eyes, and he is  _ tired,  _ and Grantaire is warm and strong and broad and he is rubbing his arm in comfort and Enjolras truly cannot be blamed. 

It is only when Grantaire stirs that he realizes he had fallen asleep, still held close in Grantaire’s arms. He cannot say for how long he has been sleeping. “Enj,” Grantaire says, soft as anything, and it’s strange, because Enjolras doesn’t think he’s ever heard Grantaire call him that before. “Enj, wake up, just for a sec.”

He blinks his eyes open. 

Grantaire pushes the mug of broth back into his hands. “Drink a little more,” he says, and Enjolras isn’t hungry but he’s cold and at the very least the broth is warm and it is good. And Grantaire wants him to drink.

Grantaire wants him to drink, so he drinks. Not very much, but enough that Grantaire lets him pass the mug back, enough that Grantaire stops looking quite so concerned. Enough that Grantaire tucks him back under his arm and lets him shut his eyes and breathe in deep.

He wakes up sweaty and achy and alone in the bed. There is a glass of water and some Tylenol on the bedside table. The apartment is silent.

This last fact is the strangest, somehow. Grantaire isn’t silent. Not that he’s--well, he is loud, sometimes, loud and argumentative and intentionally infuriating, but mostly he’s just… Comfortable. He walks around the apartment with a heavy tread and he clinks dishes and sets down books and hums under his breath and talks on the phone and there’s this constant layer of soft, easy noise and now it is gone and Enjolras misses it.

He drinks the water and swallows the Tylenol and shuffles from the bedroom, quilt wrapped around his shoulders. His legs are shaky. So are his hands, when he reaches up to turn the doorknob. 

“Grantaire?” He calls, but his voice is gone, and it comes out a weak rasp. “R?”

There is no answer.

Something somewhere near the back of Enjolras’s poor fevered brain begins to panic.

“Grantaire?” He stumbles into the kitchen--maybe Grantaire is cooking again, maybe he’s listening to music and didn’t hear him, maybe- 

The kitchen is empty. 

There is, however, a note, scrawled in Sharpie, taped to the fridge. Enjolras tears it off to read it. 

_ Enjolras- _

_ Had to run to a meeting-- _

_ Be back at 3 _

_ Soup in fridge _

_ Call me if you need me to  _

_ come back earlier _

_ -R _

Enjolras doesn’t even know what time it is; he has to check the clock on the oven. It’s not even 2:00.

He considers the note again. The soup was good, yesterday (and better for having been made by Grantaire), but he can’t stomach even the concept of eating anything. 

He also can’t bear to keep standing here on the cold tile floor, not when every muscle in his body has decided to  _ ache  _ so. He relocates to the couch.

He relocates to the couch, set on getting some work done, and he gets so far as grabbing his computer, unlocking it, and opening up the document before he realizes that he’s going to get nothing done at all. He settles for curling up against the side of the couch and letting his gaze trace the lines of the floorboards. Even that is enough to make his head spin, his limbs ache. And he’s  _ bored,  _ bored out of his mind, and he feels so terrible, and he just wishes he had somebody to-

Well, he just wishes he had somebody to brush his hair off his forehead and sit next to him and talk soft and steady, if only so that he wouldn’t feel so lonely.

Which is a little ridiculous, in and of itself--he’s an adult, he shouldn’t need somebody to fuss over him just because he’s feeling a little sick. He should be  _ fine.  _ And he should be in his own apartment, for that matter, or, like, in Combeferre’s, or something, but certainly not in Grantaire’s. Grantaire may be making him soup and fucking- fucking- fucking  _ holding  _ him, like he did last night, but just because he’s kind and caring and good at cooking doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with Enjolras. God, if Enjolras had any decency, he’d leave now, while Grantaire is out.

Which is a good idea, actually--if he leaves now, he won’t have to deal with Grantaire’s strange guilt-fueled efforts to make him stay. 

He just can’t really drag himself up off the couch, is the problem. He’ll probably just have to wait to stop invading every aspect of Grantaire’s life and space tomorrow.

In the meantime, he settles on sleep. Settles on sleep, and lets his eyes drift closed, but can’t quite manage to drift off. He’s freezing, trembling, grasping for the quilt Grantaire left over the back of the couch, but as soon as he pulls it over himself, he’s hot, far too hot, and he kicks it loose. His whole body aches, his head throbs; it’s agony, damn this stupid flu. He tosses and turns on the couch for what feels like hours and seconds at the same time, yet somehow, he still misses the click-creak of the door until Grantaire’s hand settles on his back, against his sweat-soaked shirt.

He has no right to the relief he feels, he thinks somewhere in the back of his mind, but that doesn’t stop it from rushing through him like water through dry pipes. “R,” he says, and it comes out too-soft, hoarse, muffled by the pillow his face has made its way into.

“How are you?” Grantaire asks, and his voice is so low, so soft, that Enjolras just wishes he were pressed up close, chest to chest, if only to feel it within him. “Feeling any better?”

He groans. “No,” he clears his throat, “Sorry.”

When he looks up, when he can stand to lift his head, Grantaire is watching him with the strangest look on his face, and when he speaks, it’s after a silence that’s just a bit too long to feel comfortable. “It’s okay,” he says. 

Enjolras would apologize again if he could only get his voice to work.

Grantaire leaves him no time to muster himself, muster his words. Or maybe he does--time is a little fuzzy, right now. “Have you eaten?” he asks. 

He shakes his head. “Meant to.”

Grantaire’s hand, heavy on his back, moves to settle on the back of his neck for a moment. “‘S alright.” Enjolras is pretty sure he feels Grantaire curling a lock of his hair around his fingers, but he can’t quite tell. “Want something?”

“Okay,” Enjolras says, although he isn’t particularly hungry, and he doesn’t want Grantaire to leave again.

“Okay,” says Grantaire, and, as predicted, he stands, lets his hand leave Enjolras’s skin. 

He rattles around the kitchen. Enjolras just shuts his eyes and listens as Grantaire lets the fridge door shut too hard and presses buttons on the old microwave and rustles through bags and clinks glasses in the cupboards. He’s fairly certain that he would give just about anything to be allowed this when he’s not fucking bedridden. He’s fairly certain that he’d do anything to be able to stay. He’s-

“I bought you some Gatorade at the store,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras tries and fails to push all those  _ too-much  _ thoughts from his mind. “I don’t know if you like Gatorade, but Joly said it’s good for you, so you might just have to suffer through it. Which, too bad, but you’re kind of an ascetic, sometimes, so maybe you’ll like it anyways. And I got yellow, because, well, that’s the one I like, so you’ll just have to deal with that, too.” The microwave beeps. Enjolras is reminded of Grantaire’s propensity to ramble. “Anyways, yeah, all the good stuff. Broth, Gatorade. Did you take some Tylenol?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras says, but his voice cracks. He tries again. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Grantaire comes back from the kitchen, a mug in one hand, a glass of shockingly-yellow Gatorade in the other. A box of crackers is clutched precariously between the two. “And the nice kind of crackers, too. Rosemary Sea Salt. I’m spoiling you. I’ll send you back to Combeferre when he gets back and you’ll be unbearable, and then he’ll send you back to me. Ha, a punishment upon you for my cracker-related follies. Isn’t life cruel?” He stands in front of Enjolras, now, mug held out expectantly.

Enjolras props himself up as much as he can on the side of the couch, takes the mug, tries to force his brain into productive thought. “Are you okay?” 

Grantaire… flushes, maybe? “Well, you’re one to talk,” he says, sits down. “I’m fine. Fine. Nervous, maybe, but fine.”

“Nervous?” Enjolras takes a sip of the broth. It’s just as good as it was the day before. “Why? Did your meeting go okay?”

He snorts a laugh. Enjolras doesn’t particularly like the bitter cast to it. “The meeting was fine.”

“Then-”

“Just drink your fucking broth, please, Apollo.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re no good to the righteous causes of the world if you drop dead from dehydration on my couch.”

Oh. Ouch. “Sorry,” Enjolras does as told, takes a sip. It burns his tongue, his throat. Grantaire doesn’t snap at him often, is the thing, not like he used to. It’s been a while. If anything, it all stings a little more than Enjolras remembers.

Grantaire groans, scrubs a hand over his face. “Never mind. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” Like that’s gonna happen. He drinks some more broth and tries to think back to five minutes ago, when Grantaire was still touching him, instead of being harsh and realistic and talking to him like he actually deserves. 

His head aches, pounds. 

“I don’t mean-” he starts, but he can’t quite figure out where to go from there, because he doesn’t even know what he did to make Grantaire so frustrated. Something, clearly, just- “I can’t  _ think,”  _ he hears himself say, mumble into a hand he’s splayed over his face.

Grantaire is silent for a good, long while. When he speaks, finally, it’s missing all of that tense, harsh tone that had made its way into his voice. “What a strange turning of the tables,” he says, and Enjolras thinks he’s joking, but he can’t quite be sure. “Usually, out of the two of us, I am the one who fails to produce effective thought.”

“That’s not true,” Enjolras says, and he doesn’t even know if he’s said it loud enough to be heard until Grantaire chokes back a strange little noise. “That’s-” he breaks off with a cough and, in an instant, he has Grantaire’s hand on his back once more.

When he can breathe again, he finds himself pulled in close to Grantaire’s chest. Grantaire lets him go quick, too quick, and he is left reeling and cold once more. God, why does Grantaire keep  _ doing _ that? (Whether he’s confused about Grantaire pulling him in or letting him go, well, that’s all the more confusing.)

Enjolras finds his gaze dropped to Grantaire’s carpeting and, in a moment, realizes that he can’t quite say how long it’s been there. That he can’t quite say if he knew that Grantaire had been watching him until-

“Enjolras?” Grantaire jostles him, soft, just enough to make him look up.

“Hm?”

Grantaire pushes the mug back into his hands. (Enjolras can’t even say when he took it from him.) “Have a little more.”

Enjolras brings the mug to his lips, but somehow, sometime in the past few minutes, the very idea of eating anything has become stomach-turning. He can’t quite say when he began feeling so cold. 

“You okay?” He hears Grantaire ask, but it sounds distant, muffled. His head is pounding--it  _ has  _ been pounding, for hours, but he can hardly bear it, now. “Apollo?”

He shakes his head, hands the mug back blindly and relishes in the way Grantaire takes it back in an instant, setting it down and removing it from him before he has even realized that he has been unburdened of it. He relishes, too, in the way that Grantaire’s hands are upon him, then, easing him down to lie, sprawled out, on the sofa. 

“My head hurts,” he murmurs.

Grantaire rubs at the nape of Enjolras’s neck. “Sleep, then,” he says, and Enjolras wants to protest, because he feels as though he has done very little  _ but  _ sleep, but he cannot bear to do anything else. He shuts his eyes and wills his headache to leave him. 

Grantaire leaves, instead. Enjolras nearly stops him (but doesn’t, because it isn’t his business), but it doesn’t matter, anyways, because all he hears Grantaire do is switch off the light and grab something from the bedroom--the quilt, he realizes, when Grantaire tucks it around him. And then his feet are being lifted up to make room for Grantaire on the couch, and Grantaire sets them down on his lap like they’ve always been this comfortable around one another, and Enjolras drifts off, still thinking about the solid weight of Grantaire’s hand on his shin. 

When Enjolras wakes, Grantaire is still beside him on the couch, watching some television program with the volume turned down so low it’s hardly audible. He’s half of a sandwich on a plate on the coffee table, the other half in hand--he must have gotten up at some point, only to settle back down at Enjolras’s side. 

Enjolras hacks out a cough, and Grantaire does little more than rub his thumb in comforting circles on his shin--which encourages the notion that Enjolras hadn’t exactly been sleeping peacefully, and that Grantaire was at his side, not only for the comfort of the sofa, but for the comforting of Enjolras, as well. It’s a bit much to take in.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says.

He startles, nearly drops a piece of arugula onto his lap. 

“What are you watching?”

“It’s a documentary.” It’s a nonanswer, but Enjolras wasn’t really planning on watching it too carefully, anyways. 

They sit in silence for a moment. Grantaire, suddenly, jolts his hand off of Enjolras’s leg so fast it takes a second for Enjolras to even understand what had happened. “Sorry,” Grantaire mumbles, eyes a little to the left of the television. 

Enjolras misses the contact so dearly it takes nearly all of his willpower not to implore Grantaire to please, please, place his hand back. “It’s fine,” he says, instead.

“How are you feeling?” Grantaire asks, when he seems to be able to tolerate looking at Enjolras once more. 

He thinks on that. He doesn’t feel  _ good,  _ per se, but- “Better,” he says, and clears his throat. “I think. Maybe.”

Grantaire reaches over to check his temperature with a hand on his forehead. “It might be a little lower,” he says, but he doesn’t sound completely convinced. “You should maybe still take some Tylenol.”

Enjolras could go for some Tylenol. He could also, now that he’s thinking about it, go for some food. He’s not quite sure how he should go about mentioning that to Grantaire--it feels helplessly rude to ask for anything else when he’s already imposing so horribly. Perhaps it would be best for him to leave and go out for a meal--though the mere idea of braving the chill outside and being on his feet for that long makes him wince. Maybe-

“Should I make you some tea?” Grantaire asks, and Enjolras is starting to realize that Grantaire has a somewhat limited repertoire of ways to take care of someone who’s sick. 

“Actually,” Enjolras says, bracing himself for the embarrassment of asking, “I’m a little hungry.”

Grantaire is passing him the spare half of his sandwich in an instant. “Or I could make you something else. It’s just roast beef and arugula, so I don’t know if you-”

His head is spinning and he feels oddly touched. “Thank you.” 

“Anytime,” he says, and there’s something to the tone, there, that makes it a bit more serious than Grantaire probably intended and than Enjolras knows what to do with.

They watch the documentary. Enjolras eats his sandwich. His head still hurts, and he still feels weak and cold and achy, and his throat burns, but it feels nice to have something solid in his stomach. He says as much, between bites, and Grantaire shrugs.

“You don’t count Tylenol as a solid?” he asks.

Enjolras stares. He can’t… He can’t be serious, can he? He can’t-

Grantaire cracks up, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Oh, man, I got you.”

“You did,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire hazards a smile in his direction that makes his face burn, even overtop the fever. 

The documentary drones on. Enjolras can’t truly say what it’s even about--only that Grantaire seems to be interested enough by it that lays a warm, heavy arm around Enjolras’s shoulders and pulls him in a little closer without even looking. Perhaps he thinks that he’s sitting with Jehan--Enjolras doesn’t know what other reason there might be for his behavior. In any case, he is… surrounded, utterly and completely, his head spinning from the proximity and the clean wool smell of Grantaire’s sweater. 

Aside from that--aside from the feeling of fingers in his hair, of warmth at his side, of an arm holding him close, of Grantaire breathing soft and steady beside him--he feels better, mostly. 

Better, for hours, until he doesn’t, and he finds himself clutching the rim of the toilet bowl, his throat and nose burning from the vomit that had made its way into the bowl just minutes before. 

He wonders, abstractly, whether Grantaire is still on the couch, or whether he went off to the kitchen or his bedroom or anywhere else when Enjolras made his frantic stumble for the bathroom. He might have taken the opportunity to run off to the bakery to get some bread, even, or-

He is interrupted from his thoughts by a soft knock on the bathroom door and a tentative, “Enjolras?”

Enjolras feels such a wave of hot relief at Grantaire’s presence that he cannot even muster himself to respond. 

“Enjolras?” Grantaire asks again, and he sounds so concerned. “Are you alright?” Enjolras thinks he hears him settle against the other side of the door. 

He takes a breath. “I’m okay,” he says, and he pushes back the urge to gag. “Mostly.”

“Do- Should I get you anything?”

“No,” Enjolras says, though he’s not truly sure that he means it. In any case, he says, no, but when he’s thrown up again and brushed his teeth and showered (and changed back into his old, sweaty clothes, because he’d neglected to bring any clean ones) and opened the bathroom door, Grantaire is slumped against the doorframe, gazing up at Enjolras in all his infirm glory as if it were he who had hung the very stars.

“Are you okay?” Grantaire asks again, as he scrambles to his feet. “I wasn’t sure if I should call Joly, so I haven’t yet, but I can if you think I should, I-” he takes a breath. “Are you okay?”

Enjolras takes inventory. He feels slightly better, having emptied his stomach quite effectively, and the shower helped to clear his head and wash the grime from his skin, but he still feels dull, slow, hazy. “I think the sandwich did me in,” he admits, in what he supposes might be half an effort towards humor.

Grantaire’s face just drops, if possible, even further. “Do you think it made you sick? You- you aren’t allergic to anything, are you? Oh, man, I should’ve asked, I shouldn’t have just-”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras cuts in, and his voice is scraped raw, but Grantaire stops his rambling, anyways. “I only meant- I don’t think I was used to having much in my stomach. I liked the sandwich. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says faintly. “Okay, do you-”

“I kind of just want to lay down,” he says. And he’s thinking he’ll just rest on the couch for a little while, but before he can even think to move, Grantaire blurts out-

“I changed the sheets.”

Enjolras doesn’t know whether or not he ought to be offended. He’s leaning towards yes. “You-”

“I just mean-” Grantaire swallows. Enjolras can’t help but wonder whether he’s caught the flu off him--he doesn’t look quite well. “I just mean that you seemed like maybe you- you didn’t feel comfortable, and you seem like someone who changes his sheets a lot,” he scrubs a hand through his hair. “Not that I don’t, I also change my sheets a lot, but I thought maybe you change your sheets more than average and, like, might prefer it that way, and so it’s, like, you can just know that they’re clean without having to-” he makes a vague gesture in his own general direction. “You know, trust me?”

Enjolras is a little dumbstruck, so he doesn’t exactly intend to say, “I trust you,” quite so honestly, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it.

He isn’t quite ready for the wide-eyed, open look on Grantaire’s face. 

“Grantaire?”

“You do?” He sounds confused. 

Enjolras frowns. “Yes?”

“Oh,” he says, softly. Enjolras tries not to read into it.

“So, I should…” he fades off.

Grantaire starts from the trance he appears to have fallen into. “The bed, yeah, take the bed. And some pajamas, if you want, you can just wear what you like.” He cracks a smile just a moment too late, and it’s awkward, strange. 

“Okay,” Enjolras says, “So, I’ll just…” he gestures towards the bedroom.

“Yep.”

“Okay.” He can’t quite say what he’s waiting for. Grantaire is still looking at him. 

He goes to the bedroom. 

He’s glad to be able to change out of his old clothes (Grantaire’s old clothes), but as he pulls a sweatshirt overtop a stretched-out T-shirt that he’s fairly certain Grantaire has owned since before he met him, he’s maybe more glad still to have something of Grantaire’s to change into.

Not that he’d ever admit that, of course.

(Though burying his nose in the collar of the sweatshirt doesn’t count as admitting anything, since the door to the bedroom is firmly closed.)

He goes to bed.

Goes to bed, but doesn’t quite manage to go to sleep. He’s not very tired, not after the amount he slept today, and he’s restless from the aches and chills that seem to have seeped into his very bones. He wishes he had a  _ book,  _ or anything to take his mind off of it, but the books are in the living room, and he doesn’t want to disturb Grantaire any more than he already has.

The lights are off, and he stares up at the ceiling and thinks on that. Because- because really, he doesn’t understand any of this. Any of it, from Grantaire responding to his text to him letting him study to that thing he’d said about finishing the editorial to the broth to the- oh, God, Grantaire must have stayed home from work that first day, why would he do that for him? Why would he do any of it, why would he give Enjolras part of his sandwich, why would he be so fucking  _ kind,  _ why wouldn’t he just send him home?

His head feels as though it’s about to explode. 

Why wouldn’t Grantaire stop looking at him?

Why-

He reaches over to check the time on the clock. It’s close to nine, now, and he can’t remember at what time he went to bed, but he still can’t sleep, and he can’t get warm enough and he can’t stop thinking and he can’t think at all at the same time. 

He shuts his eyes and wills himself to drift off.

After a good long time of that totally not working, he sits up with a sigh. He has to pee.

When he shuffles out of the bedroom, Grantaire is on the couch with his headphones in, sketching something in that ratty old sketchbook of his. (God, what Enjolras wouldn’t do just to be able to flip through it.) He doesn’t seem to notice Enjolras until he’s on his way back to the bedroom and he lets the bathroom door slam far too loud in the quiet of the evening.

Grantaire looks up with a start, tugs his headphones from his ears. He looks tired, unshaven, lovely. “Enjolras?”

“Sorry,” Enjolras says. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you okay?” Grantaire asks.

He shrugs. “Flu-ey.”

Grantaire frowns. “You know, I could-” he stops, then, sudden as anything, and drops his gaze to the floor. He doesn’t even offer an explanation.

“You could…” Enjolras prompts.

He swallows. “I could, um, read to you? If you can’t go to sleep? It sometimes helps me, and I just thought…”

Enjolras ought to say no. He really, really ought to say no. It’s ridiculous, to take up Grantaire’s time like this, to impose so, to get used to being able to linger so close. It’s surely annoying as anything for Grantaire, and won’t do anything to help Enjolras’s whole  _ hopelessly pining  _ thing. The course of action is clear, no matter how much he wants  _ ( _ God, he wants) to say yes.

On the other hand…

Grantaire did offer.

“Okay,” he hears himself say. “Thank you. I’d like that.” At the very least, he thinks, he is courteous in his horrific displays of overstepping any and all boundaries.

Grantaire follows him to bed, book under his arm. 

There is a bit of stilted configuration--Grantaire establishes himself firmly on the edge of the bed, but then shifts inward when he realizes that under the covers is a far more comfortable position. Enjolras, meanwhile, was plenty far away enough to be decent before Grantaire’s shift inwards, but now finds himself within hands reach, painfully close. 

He can feel the warmth from Grantaire’s skin from where he lies, and he is cold and he cannot resist the urge to rest his head against Grantaire’s sprawled-out arm. 

Grantaire makes a choking sound, takes a deep breath, and begins to read.

It’s a novel by de Balzac, Enjolras is fairly sure, though the cover has fallen off and he cannot be sure of which one it is. Grantaire’s voice is rough and low and liquid over the words, and Enjolras does not truly sleep, but rather drifts, pulled close where he lies, ever since Grantaire tugged him a little closer when he shifted to turn a page. He shuts his eyes and listens to Grantaire read on and on and on for what feels like hours, until he drops off to the same sound.

He wakes up sweaty and hot and shaky and still pressed to Grantaire’s side. For a moment, it’s almost pleasant, despite all that--after all, he’s been dreaming about waking up next to Grantaire for years.

He opens his eyes.

Grantaire is asleep, still dressed and slumped against the headboard. The book lies open beside him. The bedside light is still on, and that is enough to see him by; he is--

God, he is lovely at peace like this. He- Well, Enjolras has always thought him attractive, always. Perhaps not beautiful, but charming and rugged and handsome and so, so hot, and all that combined with his quick humor and wit that’s quicker still and talent that makes Enjolras’s head spin even when he doesn’t have the flu and oh, Enjolras would watch him for hours if it weren’t for the fact that that is certainly the last thing Grantaire would ever want.

And speaking of hours, he-

He doesn’t mean to wake Grantaire when he reaches for the clock, but his elbow slips on the comforter and the jolt against the mattress proves enough to stir him. 

“Enj?” Grantaire slurs, and there’s that nickname again, mysterious as the last time Enjolras heard it. “Whatsit?”

“Sorry,” Enjolras says, rasps out, and he reaches the clock, turns it. It’s almost eight in the morning. (He has trouble believing that Grantaire slept here beside him the whole night.)

Grantaire reaches over, fumbles a hand up to feel Enjolras’s forehead, and scowls. “Still hot,” he says. “Y’should- Tylenol, once you’re-” he seems to drop off back to sleep, then, still at Enjolras’s side.

Enjolras doesn’t really know what to make of any of this.

He doesn’t have much time to think on it, either, because just then, his phone rings. Which is strange in and of itself--he hadn’t known where his phone was since he showed up at Grantaire’s, and he certainly didn’t plug it in beside the bed. Grantaire must have, lord knows when.

He answers the call blindly, still jarred by the ringtone in the calm of the morning. “Yeah?”

“Where are you?” It’s Combeferre on the other line, which Enjolras had pretty much guessed. 

“Huh?”

“I’m at your apartment,” he says, somewhat slower. “You’re not here.”

“No, yeah, I’m,” he sits up with a groan. “I’m at R’s. I thought you were in Morocco?”

There’s a pause. “I was in Morocco. Now I’m back. You’re- You’re at Grantaire’s? I thought you were sick?”

“Yeah, I have the flu.”

“Yeah, Joly told me. Why are you at Grantaire’s apartment?”

Oh, Enjolras wishes he had a good answer to that. “I-” he tries again. “It’s-” he sighs. “It’s a long story.” 

He can hear Combeferre draw in a deep breath on the other side of the line. “Are you okay?” It’s a loaded question. 

He takes a moment to think about that. Grantaire is blinking up at him blearily, eyes still sleep-heavy and cheek marked up by the lines of the pillow, and suddenly, it’s all a bit too much. “Yeah, just-”

“Just…” Combeferre prods. Enjolras doesn’t answer. “Should I come pick you up?” He finally asks.

Enjolras shuts his eyes. “Yeah.” God, he loves Combeferre. (God, he wishes he could stay.)

“Okay.” He can hear Combeferre grabbing his keys, pulling on his coat. “See you in twenty?”

“Yeah.” He opens his eyes when Combeferre hangs up. Grantaire is watching him. 

Enjolras is a little breathless, a little hopelessly sad.

“You’re leaving?” Grantaire asks him, and Enjolras is reminded of the fact that Grantaire probably welcomes the idea of having his place to himself again.

He shrugs. “Yeah, Combeferre’s back, so…”

“Okay,” Grantaire says--almost whispers. “Did-”

Enjolras waits.

“I didn’t-”

Enjolras keeps waiting.

Grantaire scrubs a hand over his face. “We’re cool, right?”

Enjolras frowns. He hopes they are. He hadn’t really considered that they wouldn’t be, as Grantaire put it,  _ cool.  _ “Yes?” he hazards.

Grantaire bites back what looks like a wince. (Shit.) “Okay.”

“Okay,” he says.

“I’ll,” Grantaire sits up, scrubs a hand through his mess of dark curls. “I’ll go make some coffee, or something. I left your clothes on the dresser, they’re clean, so-” he seems to hurry out of the room before he can finish the thought completely.

So much for being normal about this, Enjolras thinks as he pulls on his clothes. They smell like Grantaire’s detergent.

He’s got the feeling he’s going to have trouble being normal around Grantaire for a good, long time. How can he, when he’s fallen asleep at his side? How can he, when he knows just how kind he can be? How can he, when he still doesn’t get any of it to keep?

Anyways.

Enjolras’s laptop, charger, wallet, and jacket are all on the coffee table when he walks out of the bedroom. There is coffee brewing. Grantaire has set the bottle of Tylenol beside a glass of water on the counter. 

Grantaire himself is nowhere to be found. 

Enjolras takes the Tylenol, pours himself a cup of coffee, and waits on the couch for Combeferre to show up or Grantaire to come back or both. 

By the time Combeferre texts to let Enjolras know he’s outside, Grantaire still isn’t back. Enjolras doesn’t know what to do but to gather his stuff and leave, shutting the door as softly as he can.

He feels a little torn open, honestly, and it isn’t even from the headache or the fever. 

Combeferre must see something akin to that, because he wraps Enjolras up in a hug as soon as he’s within reach. “Ready?” he asks.

Enjolras isn’t, but he says, “Ready.”

He stays at Combeferre’s apartment. And it’s nice--he’s missed Combeferre, and he’s used to it, and he has enough clothes here to not have to worry about anything, but…

Still.

(Still, he misses the feeling of Grantaire’s arm around him, misses the sound of his voice, misses the cramped comfort of his apartment, misses Grantaire.)

In any case, he stays with Combeferre, just until he gets better. The flu lingers--it really is a beast to kick--but Combeferre would never mind even if it took him a month of moping around to recover, so it’s nice. As comfortable as the remnants of the flu can be. 

He’s almost recovered, but still a little foggy, by the time the next meeting rolls around, so he goes but has Combeferre officiate it, instead. And he’s looking forward to seeing everyone (not just Grantaire, his brain unhelpfully provides), he really is, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t a little disappointed when Grantaire doesn’t show up early like he usually does to chat and drink a little.

It’s fine, though. He isn’t even worried until the meeting starts and Grantaire still isn’t there. 

God, he kind of wishes Grantaire was late all the time, just so he wouldn’t have to be concerned, but now that he thinks about it, he can hardly remember a time in the past year when Grantaire arrived after he did. He’s just always sort of… there.

Twenty minutes pass, and Enjolras is beginning to feel as though he’s done something horrible. God, if he’d only known that writing the editorial at Grantaire’s apartment would make him leave, he simply wouldn’t have turned it in to his editor in the first place. 

Grantaire doesn’t show up by the end of the meeting. He asks Joly, then, because-

Well, because maybe, a part of his mind whispers, Grantaire isn’t avoiding him at all, and simply caught the flu off of him, and that’s why he didn’t come. Maybe-

Joly gives him a sympathetic look. “No,” he says, when Enjolras asks. “He’s fine. I saw him this morning.”

Enjolras frowns. “Did he mention he wouldn’t be coming? Did he say-”

He shakes his head. “I said I wouldn’t say anything.” He looks annoyed, which is strange, for Joly, and he can’t quite tell if it’s at him or at Grantaire. 

“Oh,” Enjolras hears himself say. He feels a little… distant, almost. “Should I-”

“I don’t know, Enjolras,” Joly says. “He gets-” he sighs. “Caught up in it, sometimes. He’ll get over it.”

“Get over what?” Joly isn’t making sense anymore.

“You know,” Joly says, but Enjolras doesn’t really think he does. And then Joly makes a vague gesture at Enjolras, at him and around him. “It. The whole thing.”

He feels himself… stop, almost. “Wh- Me?” He doesn’t know what’s happening. Joly is still looking at him with such concern.

“Yeah, you know,” he says, and he starts to pack up his stuff. “Maybe you guys should finally talk about it, or something. It’s not really getting any better, is it?”

Enjolras hadn’t even noticed Bossuet standing there, but he elbows Joly in the ribs and hisses something in his ear that Enjolras can’t make out.

Joly gestures at Enjolras says and hisses back, just a bit too loud, “Well, I mean, he already  _ knows. _ ”

He feels a little bit like his flu has returned, all at once. “Knows what?” he asks, but they aren’t listening anymore. “What do I know?”

Bossuet gives him the same look Joly had. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk to R. He does this, sometimes.”

“Oh,” Enjolras says, as he watches them leave.

He doesn’t get a lot of sleep, that night.

When he wakes up--in his own apartment, this time (Combeferre had deemed him  _ well enough  _ just a few days earlier) his fever is gone, as are the aches. He feels better, nearly entirely. It’s refreshing. He makes himself a cup of coffee and two eggs and gets dressed and goes to visit Grantaire.

It’s a horrible idea, probably, he realizes on the Metro. If Grantaire didn’t want to see him at the meeting, where he could drink and watch from afar, he certainly won’t want to see him bright and early in his own apartment where he can’t get away. Christ.

It’s just…

It’s just, he’d been running what Joly and Bossuet had been saying through his head all night, and he can’t make heads or tails of it, but there’s something that-

He just needs to ask Grantaire, because he’s starting to think that- that maybe…

That maybe, just maybe, if he’s lucky, Grantaire might  _ like  _ him.

He can hardly imagine. It doesn’t make sense, not really. Or, rather, it wouldn’t make sense, except for the way that Grantaire let him come over and carried him to bed when he got sick and gave him anything he asked for without hesitation and was just so endlessly fucking  _ kind.  _ And the way he read Enjolras to sleep, that night, for fucking  _ hours,  _ and the way he sometimes looked at him, and the way that sometimes he’d ramble on as if  _ he  _ had something to be nervous about, and-

Anyways, it’s just a theory. He gets off the Metro, takes the escalator to the street. Worst case scenario-

Oh, okay, worst case scenario is that Grantaire yells at him and then never comes back and Enjolras has to just be in love with him forever for nothing in return. That would kind of suck.

After that, he tries to tamp down his thoughts for the rest of the walk to Grantaire’s apartment. He still has the code from when Grantaire texted it to him, so he enters the building and takes the stairs up and-

And knocks on Grantaire’s door.

There’s no response. Maybe Grantaire really is sick.

He knocks again, harder. (Maybe he’s at work.)

He raises his hand to knock one more time when he a faint “Coming!” from inside the apartment, followed by a clattering sound, as if something had fallen to the floor. 

And then Grantaire opens the door. He looks half asleep, still, and the scowl that had been on his face when he first opened the door quickly melts into an expression of shock, then something nearly blank. “Enjolras,” he says. 

Enjolras, suddenly, can’t really remember what he was planning on saying. “Hello, Grantaire.”

Grantaire stays silent for a long moment, simply looking at Enjolras with something strange in his eyes. Regret, perhaps? “Why-”

“You weren’t at the meeting.” He cuts to the chase.

Grantaire shrugs, but his gaze drops. “No, I wasn’t.”

It’s Enjolras’s turn to stand there, dumbstruck, apparently. “Why weren’t-”

“Does it matter?” He says it sharply, but there’s an odd flush to his cheeks. 

Oh. 

Enjolras isn’t sure why, exactly, he had been expecting a little more tact, but still. So much for his theory. “I just-”

“I kinda thought you’d be glad, honestly,” Grantaire admits, and he still won’t meet Enjolras’s eyes. “Get out of your way, you know? Not- Not overstep anything.” His voice cracks, right at the end.

“Grantaire…” He means to continue, but he can’t quite find the words, and Grantaire interrupts him, anyways. 

“Anyways,” he says, with a clap of his hands and a clearing of his throat. “Why are you here? Revolutionary actions? Forget something?”

“You thought I’d be glad?” Enjolras finds himself asking, instead of making the excuse that he intended to make.

Grantaire’s face drops, a little, from the sharp little smile that he had spread across it just moments before. “Well, like-” He doesn’t continue. Instead, he seems to be fascinated, once more, with the carpeting. 

Enjolras has lost track of where the conversation is going.

“Like-” he swallows. “Like, I just figured… Well, cause, I mean, I tried not to overstep, but it’s hard, you know? But I know you were sick, so you couldn’t, um, like-” It’s strange-- for all of Grantaire’s miraculous ability to string together words like fine glass beads, he seems to fumble them so often around Enjolras. “Like- It’s fine, cause I know I did, and you left, then, so I just kind of figured, I can take a hint, right, so… Yeah. Glad, you know?”

Enjolras tries to parse through all that. “You didn’t overstep,” is what he gets stuck on. If anyone overstepped, God, it was him.

“I-”

“How would you have overstepped? I was the one in your apartment.”

Grantaire seems to choke. “Well, you know,” he says, and then he gestures between the two of them as though Enjolras has ever known what that might mean. “So.”

“How would you have overstepped?” Enjolras asks again.

“Well, cause-” Grantaire is speaking so softly, now, that Enjolras can hardly hear him. “Cause I- Cause you were sick, and I took advantage of that to do things that you wouldn’t allow me to do otherwise,” he sounds as though he’s reciting something that he’d drafted in his head days earlier. “And I shouldn’t have, but I did, and for that I apologize, because I’m, you know-”

He stops, then, and Enjolras feels as though he’s going to scream, just from the sheer frustration of nobody  _ telling  _ him anything. “What? What are you?” He tries to keep his voice steady; he knows it doesn’t work.

Grantaire swallows. “Well, like, in love with you,” he says. He’s flushed a truly magnificent pink. 

Enjolras feels as though the floor has fallen away and he is simply standing five stories up in the air. “Wh-”

“And so I figured you would have been uncomfortable,” Grantaire says, and of course he chooses now as the moment to continue talking--now, when Enjolras cannot find any words at all. “So I just… didn’t come. So.”

Enjolras is still speechless. His heart is thrumming inside his chest. 

Grantaire, irritatingly, says, “Yep,” and shuts the door.

Enjolras stares at the wood paneling for a good minute before he realizes that Grantaire just said that he was in love with him. In love with him, that’s why he was avoiding him. Not that… Not that he hated him, not that he was annoyed, not any of that. In love with him. He loves him back. 

God, what fucking idiots they are. 

He forces his body back into action, because he’s starting to get the impression that if he doesn’t, he’s just going to stand on Grantaire’s doorstep until he wastes away. 

He pounds on the door, maybe too loud for how early it is and how close Grantaire’s neighbor is across the hall. “Grantaire!” He knocks again. “Grantaire!”

Grantaire pulls the door open. His eyes are bloodshot. He looks painfully wary.

Enjolras speaks before Grantaire can say anything else dumb. “You’re in love with me?”

He scowls, curls inwards into his hoodie as though he were trying to shelter himself. “Well, yeah,” he says, as if it was obvious.

It was  _ not  _ obvious, thanks very much.

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Well,  _ yeah,”  _ Grantaire says, and honestly, he’s so insufferable, sometimes. Enjolras is trying to- to  _ do  _ something here, and he’s busy giving him trouble.

“ _ Why?” _

He shrugs. “I mean, everybody knows.” His voice is oddly shaky. 

“I didn’t.”

“You-” he frowns. “You didn’t?”

“No.”

“ _ How?” _

“I didn’t think you liked me very much,” Enjolras admits. “Nobody told me.”

“Oh.”

“I wish somebody had,” Enjolras offers, when Grantaire says nothing more.

Grantaire looks up, brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Well, I’ve kind of been in love with you for, like, five years.”

Grantaire just… stops. Stops, still staring at Enjolras, one hand halfway between the pocket of his hoodie and the doorway, his mouth mostly open. Enjolras doesn’t think he’s breathing.

“Grantaire?” Enjolras hazards, when he begins to grow concerned. “R, are-”

He lets out a wounded sound, more air than anything. 

“Are you-” Enjolras reaches up a hand, maybe to settle it on his shoulder, but he takes a chance and rests it on Grantaire’s cheek, instead. “Grantaire?”

Grantaire clenches his eyes shut and stumbles a little, almost. Enjolras keeps the contact. “You-” his voice cracks. “Say it again?”

“I love you?”

He draws in a deep, shaking breath and reaches a hand up, just to rest it atop Enjolras’s. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, wow.”

Enjolras starts to laugh--rough, unsteady--just from it all, but then he sees the tear roll down Grantaire’s cheek. “Hey, wait, Grantaire-” he rubs it away with his thumb. “I thought-”

Grantaire laughs, too, then, rough and unsteady, all the same. “No, yeah, I’m fine, I’m good, it’s just-” He sniffs. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Christ.” Grantaire lists forwards and kisses him.

It takes Enjolras a little while to get his bearings--after all, being kissed by Grantaire is very new for him. New, but God, really wonderful, and he’s realizing really fast that he’d be pretty content to be kissed by Grantaire like this forever. It’s not even a very intimate kiss--just Grantaire a little closer, one hand on his waist, but it’s so  _ much.  _ Grantaire kisses so  _ kindly,  _ all gentle and giving.

Grantaire breaks away but Enjolras wants more, would do anything for more. “Okay?” he asks.

“Uh-huh,” he murmurs, taking a step forward as Grantaire takes a step back. “Kiss me again?” 

And he does. He slides his arm around Enjolras’s waist, and pulls him in tight, so tight, and Enjolras feels more safe now than he ever has. Grantaire is kissing him deep as anything, and he doesn’t realize that they’re moving until Grantaire has tugged him inside and shut the door. And Enjolras takes that as the perfect opportunity to move this along, maybe, only Grantaire steps back and says, “Um, should we, like… Discuss this?”

Enjolras very nearly just says,  _ no, thank you _ . Because fucking  _ God,  _ this is good. Only-

Only he kind of wants to make this work out, and Grantaire is still looking so anxious, so he nods.

They sit down on the couch. Enjolras is hoping that Grantaire will start talking first--when he doesn’t, he looks over to find him staring tentatively at Enjolras’s hand, where it rests on the cushion, only a few centimeters from Grantaire’s. He’s got the feeling that Grantaire isn’t going to make a move, here, so he slides his hand over. Their fingers overlap.

Enjolras really didn’t think that he would ever get something like this with Grantaire again. 

“So,” Grantaire says, still watching their hands. “So, you-”

He waits.

“So, um, you-”

He wonders where Grantaire means to go with this.

“So, you, um, we-”

“I love you,” Enjolras offers.

“Yeah,” Grantaire chokes out. “Yeah, that, and, um, I do as well, so-”

“So…”

That seems to be all Grantaire can do for the conversation. 

Enjolras waits for a moment, then says, “So, I suppose, it comes down to what you want out of this.”

Grantaire looks up at Enjolras with wide, wide eyes. “What I want?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not-” he seems confused. “That shouldn’t-”

Enjolras slides his hand more solidly into Grantaire’s. 

Grantaire draws in a slow, trembling breath. “I feel as though that shouldn’t necessarily be the- the determiner of this.”

He frowns. “Why not?”

“I mean-” he swallows. “I just- I’d kind of take anything you’d be willing to give me, so it just makes more sense for you to say what you’re looking for.”

Enjolras can’t help the grin that rises to his face. He hides it against Grantaire’s shoulder. (God help him, but he’d take anything Grantaire would give him, too.) “I think we should date,” he says.

Grantaire sucks in another breath. “Okay,” he says. “Date, okay, we can date.” He sounds as though he’s transcribing it very carefully in his mind.

“I think you should kiss me again,” 

He startles, at that, flushes a little, but does little more than lift Enjolras’s hand to his mouth and place a soft kiss to his fingers. He’s watching Enjolras, now, careful as anything, and his hands are so warm and strong and broad and Enjolras feels as though he may swoon. 

“Okay,” Enjolras says, because Grantaire is still watching, waiting, looking for something.

That seems to be enough, because he disentangles his fingers from Enjolras’s and weaves them into his hair, instead, when he leans in for a kiss. And oh, it’s wonderful, especially with Grantaire kissing him a little harder and pressing him against the back of the couch. Enjolras lets himself run a hand over Grantaire’s chest. Grantaire seems to be intent on kissing him so thoroughly that he is wont to forget how to breathe. 

When Enjolras breaks away to gasp and holds Grantaire close, all the same, Grantaire simply bends down to leave kisses, wet and desperate and shameless, over the side of Enjolras’s neck. Enjolras scratches his fingers through Grantaire’s hair and tries not to moan but decides, in the end, that it doesn’t matter, anyways. 

His elbow gives out, where it had been propping him up, and he falls flat on his back on the cushions. Grantaire goes with him, landing fully against him and oh-so-close, and Enjolras is suddenly having a lot of trouble not wanting more. 

Grantaire still has that hoodie on, and Enjolras hopes he isn’t pushing too hard but he just needs to get it out of the way, so he tugs at the collar and pulls Grantaire away from the attention he’d been paying to his neck. 

“Hm?” Grantaire sits up, just a little, and looks at Enjolras with eyes blown wide and lips wet and pink. 

Enjolras tugs at the sweatshirt again. 

Grantaire gives him a hopelessly lost look, for a moment, before he gets struck by realization and scrambles to pull it off. His shirt rides up, in the process, and Enjolras gets a wonderful flash of stomach and side before Grantaire is pushing it down again and looking to Enjolras for approval.

Enjolras certainly fucking approves. He tugs Grantaire down again, kisses him sloppy and deep, and Grantaire has got a hand inching up Enjolras’s side. Not very far, mind--just a few centimeters of skin-on-skin, but  _ oh,  _ it’s nice, and Enjolras can feel himself starting to get hard.

He shifts, hoping that Grantaire will get the message and slide his hand up a little further, but he just starts, darts his hand back.

Enjolras catches his hand, breaks the kiss. “Do you want me to take my shirt off?” He asks.

Grantaire looks as though he’s unsure as to whether this is a trap or not. “Do you… Want to take your shirt off?”

He can’t quite say when he got bold enough to say, “I want you to take  _ your _ shirt off,” but it must have happened, because he says it. 

“Oh,” Grantaire mouths. “You do?”

“If you want to.”

“Okay,” he says, and he sounds confused, but he does it, and Enjolras is suddenly faced with Grantaire, shirtless, atop him. 

He has to take a moment, just to look. He’s seen Grantaire shirtless a few times before--he had known to expect the boxer’s muscles, the comfortable weight around them, the dark hair, the one tattoo on his shoulder. It’s just different, now that he’s allowed to look. Now that he knows he’ll see it again. 

He maybe stares too long--when he looks back up at Grantaire’s face, there’s a look of profound uncomfort writ across it--but he couldn’t exactly help that. He leans in to kiss him again, because he pretty much just has to, and Grantaire is so, so warm beneath his hands. 

He wants more. He leans back, pulls his shirt off over his head, and when he’s escaped getting caught in the neck of his shirt and tossed it down, Grantaire is looking at him with a kind of reverence that he has only seen peripherally before now. Straight on, it’s so  _ much-- _ it drives deep, deep down to his core, and he just wants to feel Grantaire against him.

Enjolras tugs Grantaire close, wraps an arm around him, shifts a little, and-

And feels Grantaire’s cock, hard, against his thigh.

Grantaire winces. “Sorry.”

Enjolras presses his forehead to Grantaire’s. “Wanna?”

“Do I want to what?” He’s still kind of pulling away from Enjolras, here.

Enjolras, in what is probably not his most subtle move ever, grinds his thigh up again. “You know. Maybe…”

Grantaire gapes at him. “You-”

“It’s just a suggestion.”

Grantaire tentatively reaches a hand down to… well, to survey the area, Enjolras supposes. He settles it on Enjolras’s hard cock, atop his clothes, and-

Enjolras gasps, shifts a little closer. “Oh, God, please?” He breathes. 

Grantaire gives a little helpless laugh, then kisses him. Kisses him, and pulls him in close, and works the button of his fly open to slip his hand inside, and-

Enjolras moans against Grantaire’s mouth. Because, oh, Christ, this is good. Grantaire is jerking him off tight and steady, his hand wide and warm, and he’s kissing him with a certain relentlessness that gives Enjolras the distinct impression that this isn’t going to last very long.

Grantaire is so, so lovely, Enjolras thinks to himself. He lets himself run a hand up his back, muscled and broad, and luxuriates in the feeling of skin under his hand. And Grantaire has added a certain twist to his wrist, and he’s moved down to kiss Enjolras’s neck, now, and it’s all so wonderful that-

“Love you,” Enjolras gasps, and he’s got his hand in Grantaire’s hair and he can’t help but tug, just a little, just to get his attention. “Grantaire, God, fuck, I love you.”

Grantaire whines against Enjolras’s neck, bites a little. He’s jerking him off faster, now, but a little unsteadier, too. That’s okay, though, because the rest makes up for it. “Enj,” he manages. Enjolras can feel his words against his skin.

“Grantaire,” he moans.

Grantaire ruts up against Enjolras’s hip, sudden and desperate. “Sorry,” he chokes out, but he doesn’t stop, and Enjolras doesn’t want him to.

“‘S good,” he says. “Want you to.”

Grantaire bites hard, hard enough to bruise, at the corner of Enjolras’s jaw. “Sorry, sorry,” he says again, and licks the spot. Enjolras is seriously going to lose it, honestly, this is too much, it’s too good, it’s too- “Love you,” Grantaire murmurs, into Enjolras’s hair, and that’s it. He’s gone.

Enjolras comes harder than he thinks he ever has in his life. Grantaire works him through it, kisses him hard, and by the end, he is left limp and shaking on Grantaire’s couch. 

“Oh,” he says, when he can speak.

Grantaire lets out a stifled moan into his neck. He’d pulled away from Enjolras’s thigh when Enjolras had started to come, and now--Enjolras reaches a hand down to get a lay of the land--he ruts desperately against his own hand, his face buried in Enjolras’s hair. 

“R,” he murmurs. 

Grantaire moans again.

“R,” he says again, “Grantaire, can I-”

He nods frantically, his humility apparently all but forgotten. 

Enjolras slips his hand into Grantaire’s sweatpants, curls it around Grantaire’s cock. (Grantaire groans like a parched man given water in a desert.) It’s a nice cock, hot and heavy, and he’d probably have more time to think on it if Grantaire wasn’t bucking up into his hand. 

“This is nice,” Enjolras remarks as he jerks Grantaire off, mainly just between himself and his orgasm-addled brain. “We can do this again, right?”

Grantaire runs a trembling hand up Enjolras’s side. “Anything,” he gasps out. “Anything you want, anything.”

Enjolras kind of just wants Grantaire.

He jerks him off a little faster. “Is this good?” He asks. He hopes it is--he hasn’t exactly jerked off a huge number of guys, so he doesn’t really know.

Grantaire nods again, gasping brokenly against Enjolras’s neck, but wraps a hand around Enjolras’s. “Like-” He squeezes, so Enjolras holds a little tighter, and-

And apparently, that’s all it took, because Grantaire is coming, hot and pulsing, over his hand, holding him so close that he can’t quite breathe. (He doesn’t want to, anyways.) And then he’s collapsing against Enjolras, a comforting, solid weight, and all Enjolras can think is that all this is  _ his,  _ now. His to keep, his to hold. 

“Fuck,” Grantaire mumbles, God knows how long later. Enjolras is pretty sure he himself had taken a short nap. “Fuck, geez.”

“That was nice,” Enjolras agrees. He kind of wants to kiss Grantaire again. 

Grantaire snorts a laugh. “Yeah, Enj, it was.” He props himself up on his elbows and looks down at Enjolras. Enjolras looks back up at him and considers the fact that he has never met anyone who looks at him the way Grantaire does. “What happens now?” His face has dropped a little, but Enjolras is pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to notice that.

Enjolras thinks that over. He could go for lunch, honestly, even though it’s a little early. Maybe just a little snack, then, or- 

He shifts, grimaces. “I have come in my pants. And on my hand. Can I take a shower?”

Grantaire starts to laugh, then seems to realize that he is in the same predicament. “Yeah, I think showers sound good.”

“And then maybe we could go for lunch?” Enjolras asks, and when Grantaire doesn’t respond, he continues. “Like, a date?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, and his voice sounds a little shaky, but Enjolras doesn’t mind. “And then a date.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says, and he can’t really stop smiling.

“Go shower,” Grantaire says, but he’s smiling, too.

**Author's Note:**

> grantaire's one saving grace is the fact that enjolras is too oblivious to notice just how fucking awkward he is around him.
> 
> this is literally just 14k words of helpless pining. i cannot be stopped. 
> 
> if u comment i will love u forever and also write more quickly because i thrive off of ur validation so really it's in ur best interest to do so
> 
> also, get your flu shot.


End file.
